Surprising Food Origins

October 21, 2011

6of11

Cheese

Milk gets you butter, butter gets you yogurt, and yogurt gets you cheese. All you need to do is separate the watery yogurt from the clumpy curds floating around in your disgusting petri dish of an animal skin, let them sit around while you go kill a wooly mammoth or something, then come back and enjoy the cheesy deliciousness. Over time, cheese making became something of an art, which led to the infinite variety of stinky varieties available in grocery stores today. American Cheese, however, often doesn’t meet the legal definition of cheese, which is why you’ll often see it labeled as “processed cheese” or “cheese food” instead of just plain cheese. And we’re not even going to go into where that powdered stuff in macaroni boxes comes from. We’re pretty sure we don’t want to know.

Photo: Joi Ito/CC

6of11

Cheese

Milk gets you butter, butter gets you yogurt, and yogurt gets you cheese. All you need to do is separate the watery yogurt from the clumpy curds floating around in your disgusting petri dish of an animal skin, let them sit around while you go kill a wooly mammoth or something, then come back and enjoy the cheesy deliciousness. Over time, cheese making became something of an art, which led to the infinite variety of stinky varieties available in grocery stores today. American Cheese, however, often doesn’t meet the legal definition of cheese, which is why you’ll often see it labeled as “processed cheese” or “cheese food” instead of just plain cheese. And we’re not even going to go into where that powdered stuff in macaroni boxes comes from. We’re pretty sure we don’t want to know.